Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats (3 page)

Longarm could smell the smoke from the fire. He could hear the shooting clearly now. Men were shouting angrily. A dog was barking anxiously, and a baby was crying.

The edge of the town was a hundred yards away. As the Hanoverian pulled the carriage around the last bend, Longarm hauled back on the reins. The horse stopped under some scraggly aspens. The aspens and a large boulder shielded the carriage from town.

Longarm set the brake and dropped to the ground.

“You ladies stay here,” he ordered, jogging to the rear of the carriage, where their luggage was stored in a rack.

“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” intoned Mrs. Schimpelfinnig. She stood up in the carriage and was staring through the trees toward town. “That's shooting, isn't it? Oh, Lord! I knew this trip was a mistake, Cynthia. Out here there are no laws except the law of the gun! These backwater settlements are populated by
owlhoots
!”

“Aunt Beatrice, please sit down!”

“Ma'am, I going to have to ask you to sit down,” Long­arm said, sliding his prized Winchester '73 from its leather scabbard and tossing the scabbard back into the luggage rack.

“Lawless, I tell you!” chortled Cynthia's stout aunt. “Deputy Long, I demand that you turn this carriage around this very instant and take us back to the train at Cheyenne!”

“Ma'am, we're a good ways out of town, so you shouldn't be in any trouble, but I'm not going to guarantee that if you don't take a seat, you won't get your head blown off!”

Cynthia was tugging on the heavy woman's arm. “Aunt Beatrice, please sit down!” She whipped her anxious gaze to Longarm. “Custis, what's happening?”

“I don't know, but I'm going to find out.” Longarm pumped a cartridge into the Winchester's magazine, off cocked the hammer, and set the barrel on his right shoulder. “You stay here with your aunt. When I think it's safe for you to enter the town, I'll come back for you. Until then, you both stay here and keep your heads down!”

With that he bounded forward along the trail, running as fast as his long legs could take him.

“Custis, be careful!” Cynthia yelled behind him.

As Longarm rounded the bend and approached the town, he could see down the main street, which was merely an extension of the trail he was on.

He'd been right. The building that was on fire was on the town's right side, about halfway down the ­street—­a corner building that appeared constructed of pink sandstone. Since the building, excepting its ­shake-­shingled mansard roof, was stone, the fire likely wouldn't spread as quickly to the other buildings around it. So far, aside from flames spitting from the windows, it seemed to be contained.

The shooting seemed to be coming from both sides of the street near the burning building. Longarm could see smoke puffing from behind a stock trough on the street's left side and from the ­broken-­out windows of another building on the right. A ­medium-­sized spotted dog stood between Longarm and the shooters, on a boardwalk, staring toward the commotion, anxiously wagging its tail and barking its fool head off.

Longarm slowed his pace as he angled toward the first building at his end of the town, on the street's right side. He had to size up the situation, figure out who was shooting at whom, as best he could without getting his own head shot off. Only then could he try to defuse the trouble.

He stepped onto a boardwalk fronting a small drugstore. Someone jerked a shade down over a window to his right, and he heard quick footsteps as someone hurried into hiding. Longarm continued forward along the roofed boardwalk fronting the drugstore. When he was almost to the building's other side, he stopped and jerked back, pressing his shoulder against the drugstore's front wall.

He edged a look around the corner and into the alley beyond. A man was walking up the alley toward the main ­street—­a tall man in a ­high-­crowned brown Stetson, ­spruce-­green duster, and ­high-­topped, brown boots with spurs. He had two pistols on his hips and a Winchester in his gloved hands.

A curly wolf, if Longarm had ever seen one.

Longarm stepped away from the drugstore's front wall, aiming his own Winchester straight out from his right hip. With quiet, commanding menace, he said, “Hold it, feller. I'm a deputy U.S. marshal. Toss down that rifle and face me.”

The man stopped dead in his tracks, facing the street. He appeared to stop breathing for a moment. A half second later he widened his eyes and gritted his teeth as he swung toward Longarm, leveling his carbine and loudly ramming a shell into the action.

Longarm fired twice, his Winchester crashing loudly around the alley, his empty cartridge casings pinging onto the boardwalk behind him.

He levered a fresh shell into the firing chamber and watched the hard case trigger his own rifle into the ground as he stumbled back against the wall behind him.

He grunted as he dropped the rifle and tried to get his feet beneath him to no avail. One foot slipped out from under him and he fell back against the wall and slid down to the ground, where he lay on his side, shaking.

Longarm took a knee, looking around.

Soon he realized that the hard case he'd shot had likely been trying to slip around behind the men shooting from the opposite side of the main street, from in front of a feed store about a block up from Longarm's position. That meant at least one of those fellas was a ­lawman—­possibly Thrum's son, Ryan, who'd taken over the local lawdogging job from his father about a month ago, due to Thrum's latest heart attack.

The men on the side of the law were throwing intermittent spurts of lead at a building just up the street from Longarm. Judging by the shots, he thought there were five guns being ­fired—­three on the street's right side, two on its left side, where the townsmen were hunkered down behind a stock trough.

Longarm hoped he was right about who was who, because at the rate the pink building was burning and due to spread, he had to work fast in helping the lawman or whoever was holding off the curly wolves. He stepped out into the alley where the dead man lay, and then walked down the gap to his right, intending to get around the other three outlaws.

He shouldered up to the side of the building on the alley's far side, doffed his hat, and edged a look around the rear. All clear. Donning his hat, he hurried around the corner and began ­long-­striding toward the building from which the outlaws were firing. He thought it was the third one to the west.

The thought had no sooner swept through his brain than a man stepped out a back door of the very building that Longarm was heading for. Longarm stopped. The other man stopped. He was small and young, wearing a ­broad-­brimmed tan hat. Two pistols were tied low on his hips. The eyes shaded by the hat brim were set close together, and they had a sharp, menacing light in them.

He was carrying a Henry rifle down low by his side. Now, holding Longarm's gaze, he slowly began to raise the rifle.

“Uh-uh,” Longarm said. “You don't wanna do that, young fella. I'm a federal lawman.”

As if to show Longarm how wrong he was, the kid gave an angry, bellowing wail and snapped his rifle up, cocking it. Longarm shot him twice in the chest, lifting him off his feet and throwing him several yards straight back. His body hit the ground, and the rifle clattered down beside him a half a second later.

Longarm broke into a dead run, quickly covering the ground between him and the building the kid had come out of. The rear door was open. Longarm sidled up to the back of the ­wood-­frame building, stepped up to the door, doffed his hat, and edged a peek inside. He couldn't see much in the dense shadows, but he could hear men shouting and shooting from the front of the ­place—­a shop of some kind.

He doffed his hat and hurried into the rear room, slid a curtain aside from a doorway, and peered into what looked like a woman's dress shop, with wooden mannequins standing here and there, wearing the latest in ladies' fashions, and bolts of cloth leaning in racks. Long­arm stared past a counter to his left toward the front of the store, where three men were hunkered down by three ­broken-­out windows.

One was just now shooting two pistols through the window nearest the closed door and shouting, “Best let us on out of here, McIntyre. You don't, and we'll burn it down!”

Near the outlaw, a ­middle-­aged woman in a crisp ­green-­and-­gold-­brocade dress trimmed with white lace lay dead in a pool of her own blood, glassy eyes staring at the ceiling. Broken window glass was scattered over and around the woman.

The dead woman kindled a fire inside of Longarm. He stepped through the curtained doorway and dropped to a knee at the end of the counter. He could see only one of the shooters ­clearly—­the one who'd just fired and was now sitting on the floor with his back against the front wall, punching fresh cartridges into one of his two pistols.

Blood oozed from a bullet burn on his right cheek.

Longarm pressed his Winchester's stock against his shoulder and drew a bead on the outlaw. He shouted, “Hold it there, you son of a bitch. Custis Long, U.S. mar­shal!”

He was pleased as punch when the outlaw did not heed his warning but shot a ­fiery-­eyed, startled gaze at him and snapped up one of his pistols. The outlaw didn't get a single shot off before Longarm's Winchester roared, punching a .44-caliber slug through the dead center of his forehead and painting the wall behind him with chunks of white brain and gobs of red blood.

“What the hell?” one of the other men shouted, whipping around.

Longarm threw himself to the floor in front of the counter as a rifle cracked three times quickly. The slug chewed through bolts of cloth or thumped into the front of the counter.

“Someone snuck up on us from behind, Bristol!” shouted the man who'd just fired.

Longarm rose, rammed his rifle between two bolts of cloth, planted a bead on the chest of a man moving toward him and crouching over an old Spencer carbine. The man saw the rifle barrel and widened his eyes. Before he could snap the carbine up, Longarm drilled three rounds through his chest.

The man screamed, dropped his rifle, and stumbled backward, pinwheeling, before he fell through the large, ­broken-­out middle front window and out onto the boardwalk.

Another man ran toward Longarm, screaming and triggering two pistols. Longarm dropped to the floor and scrambled around behind the display holding the bolts of cloth. The shooter's pistols blazed away at where Long­arm had been, causing shredded cloth to rain amidst a thick, peppery cloud of powder smoke.

Longarm hunkered down between the end of the display and the front counter, quickly, quietly shoving fresh cartridges into his Winchester's loading gate. The last outlaw was still triggering led into the bolts around Long­arm, yelling, “You're gonna die you federal ­badge–­totin' son of a bitch!”

Longarm heard one of the man's pistols click, empty.

There was another tinny click.

The man said, “Shit!”

Longarm rose to his feet and swung around the opposite side of the bolt cloth display. The ­shooter—­a short, paunchy man in a ragged yellow shirt and brown ­chaps—­stood staring at him, ­hang-­jawed in shock. Longarm rammed his Winchester's brass butt plate against the short killer's forehead, and the man stumbled backward, twisted around, and fell to his hands and knees, groaning.

Longarm stepped forward, rammed his right boot toe against the man's ass, driving him to the floor where he lay, groaning and whimpering, half conscious.

Longarm dropped to a knee beside the man and looked through the ­broken-­out windows. The shooting had stopped. An incredulous silence hung over the street. Wisps of black smoke and ashes billowed in front of the windows.

Longarm shouted, “Hold your fire, fellas! Custis Long, deputy U.S. marshal! I believe they're done for!”

Out in the street, aside from the barking dog, there was only silence. Longarm spied movement, however. A man rose from behind the stock trough on the street's other side, ­kitty-­corner from the ladies' dress shop.

Longarm grabbed the back of the injured hard case's collar and jerked the man across the shop to the front door, which was closed. He opened the door, kicking the groaning man through it and onto the boardwalk fronting the shop, and turned to face the street, ready to seek cover if some nervous townsman triggered a shot at him.

He recognized the man walking toward him as Thrum McIntyre, former sheriff of Platte County. Longarm didn't say anything.

He was taken aback by the man's shocked, haggard expression as he angled across the street to Longarm's right. McIntyre was a tall, lanky man in a cream shirt and brown vest, wavy silver hair dropping from his brown Stetson to brush his shirt collar. His weathered face was craggy and hung from the cheekbones like individual swatches of ­time-­yellowed leather. His ­soup-­strainer mustache was the same silver as his hair.

Time had been hard on the aging lawman. His shoulders and hips were pointy, and he leaned forward as though against a heavy burden.

Scowling his bewilderment, Longarm followed the old lawman with his eyes. McIntyre crouched over a man lying in the street to Longarm's right. The marshal placed a hand on the fallen man's shoulder, and then turned to yell at the aproned men stepping warily out of their shops, most holding rifles or shotguns, and at the cowboys moving out of the saloons.

“Grab some buckets!” McIntyre shouted, waving a bent arm toward the burning building that Longarm now saw was a bank. “Form a brigade. Get that fire doused before it spreads! Some of you fellas fetch shovels and start throwin' dirt!”

As though in a trance, McIntire then returned his gaze to the fallen man before him.

Longarm looked around. In the street before the bank lay two other ­men—­one near the stock trough behind which McIntyre had taken cover, another on the boardwalk fronting a saloon. Apparently, the cutthroats had robbed the bank, and the fallen were men the robbers had cut down as they'd tried to get away.